Tuesday, June 27, 2017

Have You Heard

Tweet Have You Heard Episode #20: Personalized Learning and the Disruption of Public Education Fantastic news, listener. The cure for what ails our long failing public schools has finally been found and it’s personalized learning! Except that as our special guest, Bill Fitzgerald, breaks down for us, a more accurate term for this miracle cure-all is *algorithmically-mediated learning, which is ab

Tweet I’m responsible for the appointment of Betsy DeVos as Secretary of Education. Are you? By Alicia 18 th century political and moral philosopher Joseph de Maistre said every country gets the leader it deserves. More recently, professor and public intellectual Tressie McMillan Cottom pointed out there are no innocent parties in the expansion of market-based education. That’s over two centuries

Tweet I talk to veteran union critic Mike Antonucci about what’s next for unions, whether charter school teacher organizing is *a thing,* and whether he has any advice for teacher union heads Randi Weingarten and Lily Eskelsen Garcia… Jennifer Berkshire : You’ve been predicting that it’s only a matter of time until the Supreme Court delivers a crushing blow vs. public sector unions. This intervie

JUN 06

Tweet Have You Heard Episode #19: Big Money and School Board Elections Today’s $17 million question: how did school boards become the must-have accessory for the donor who has everything? That’s the question that Jack Schneider and I put to researcher Rebecca Jacobsen, who has been studying the role of big donors in school board races across the country. Jacobsen walks us through the emergence of

MAY 26

Tweet Betsy DeVos’ top advisor led a for-profit university that defrauded students and hoovered up federal student aid. Now Robert Eitel is tasked with *right-sizing* the Department of Education. What could possibly go wrong? Jennifer Berkshire : This week Betsy DeVos announced that she was tasking one of her top advisors, Robert Eitel , formerly of Bridgepoint Education, Inc., with overseeing th

Tweet Did you hear the one about how charter schools were the brainchild of Albert Shanker, the legendary teachers union head? Writer Rachel Cohen did, but when she began tracing the tale back to its origins, she found that the real